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  1. Not Surprising on TV Ownership Declines For Second Time Since 1970 · · Score: 2

    I haven't looked at a TV transmission in over a year, I only happen to have 2 monitors that incorporate receivers, cancelled cable over 5 years ago.

    I either watch DVDs or streaming video. I do have a lovely home theater arrangement, with little or no time to watch it.

    TV hit the point of diminishing returns a decade ago.

  2. Re:What's different on Android 3.0 Is Trickling In, But Are the Apps? · · Score: 1

    Pretty much FUD or worse. I own several tablets w/ 1024x600, 800x600 and 800x480 resolutions running 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3. All the apps scale fine (w/ the exception of ACV which has pretty much been obsoleted by PerfectView). To tell the truth, the cellphone style interfaces are fine particularly if you have fat fingers and bad eyes.

    This is mainly a game by which Apple defines what are "real" tablets to continue the perception of the tablet as an expensive luxury item.

  3. Re:It's good Tim is getting more exposure on Steve Jobs Taking Medical Leave of Absence · · Score: 1

    You mean nobody pushed the hype level on tablets to 11 before he did. My SmartQ7 and Fujitsu 5032D existed well before the iPad.

  4. Re:Less ad money? on Hacked iRobot Uses XBox Kinect To See World · · Score: 1

    Yes, but I plan on spoofing it w/ my harem of RealDolls

  5. Re:Tampering! on Kinect Hacked, Adafruit Bounty Won · · Score: 2, Funny

    The M$ PR department has issued a correction please replace "product tamperers" with "pedo-vandals w/ WMDs"

  6. Re:Every 2 seconds? on Real-Time Holograms Beam Closer To Reality · · Score: 2, Informative

    Speaking w/ 30+ years of experience in holography, this is going to be really miserable to make practical. The computation involved is hideous for realistic scenes and the bandwidth is insane. If you want to get real time and something better than sick figures you have to heavily constrain the wavefront reconstruction.

    A true hologram reconstructs the entire wavefront emanating from a scene, which gives it it's unique nature. Cut back the bandwidth and the realism or the viewing angle go to hell.

  7. Re:How about one of these for Python? on Land of Lisp · · Score: 1

    “Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python”

  8. Re:Python is the Lisp of the 21st century on Land of Lisp · · Score: 1

    Amen! Python is elegant, trivial to install, trivial to use, but insanely powerful. Even on a windows machine, installing a very comprehensive toolchain involves installing Python(x,y) and PyGame

    What freaks me out is the mystification of programming and hardware. Having grown up on Ahl's "Basic Games" I always thought computer literacy would increase. Instead we have bunches of fanbois who boast of how ignorant of the hardware and software they use. I mean, when did superuser become an honorific?

  9. Re:Python is the Lisp of the 21st century on Land of Lisp · · Score: 1

    Actually every good Python editor does that automatically. Particularly PyDev under eclipse

  10. Re:Best of Both Worlds on US Objects To the Kilogram · · Score: 1

    The Kilogram is obviously far too French. They will obviously attempt to socialize it by redefining it as how many baguettes of cheese a surrender monkey can eat.

  11. Re:Students will complain on Colleges May Start Forcing Switch To eTextbooks · · Score: 1

    "This put Dan in a dilemma. He had to help her—but if he lent her his computer, she might read his books. Aside from the fact that you could go to prison for many years for letting someone else read your books, the very idea shocked him at first. Like everyone, he had been taught since elementary school that sharing books was nasty and wrong—something that only pirates would do. ...

    Of course, Lissa did not necessarily intend to read his books. She might want the computer only to write her midterm. But Dan knew she came from a middle-class family and could hardly afford the tuition, let alone her reading fees. Reading his books might be the only way she could graduate. He understood this situation; he himself had had to borrow to pay for all the research papers he read. (Ten percent of those fees went to the researchers who wrote the papers; since Dan aimed for an academic career, he could hope that his own research papers, if frequently referenced, would bring in enough to repay this loan.)"

      From The Right to Read by Richard Stallman

  12. Re:Not a netbook? What? on Early Review of 11" Macbook Air · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Quite true, I've been using a EEE 1000HAB ($179 off of woot) with the memory upped to 2GB hooked to a 23" monitor w/ a USB key as my sole "Windows Box" to write a 40 Page proposal which had to be in a ".doc" format. I ended up doing all the illustrations using Poser, DIA and GIMP. It worked fine for this role, perhaps a tad less snappy than a full out computer but perfectly fine for my purposes. It's thin enough and light enough to toss in my big bag or a netbook bag. In fact I prefer just tossing it in my bag rather than a USB drive so I can make any mods to the documents onsite. My I note that my other 1000 HAB runs Ubuntu 10.10 UNR.

    All that at 17.9% of the cost of a MBA

  13. Re:Creator and Overseer of Android Responds on Steve Jobs Lashes Out At Android · · Score: 1

    Was just typing nearly the same thing in this morning to get an up to date version of Android-x86 Froyo for my T91MT.
    Of course if you tried to do that w/ iOS you'd be committing several felonies

  14. Just What We Need on Creating a Quantum Superposition of Living Things · · Score: 3, Funny

    Schrodinger's Flu!

  15. Think about learning as a distro on Schooling, Homeschooling, and Now, "Unschooling" · · Score: 1

    Knowledge has a series of dependencies. You can't really do quantum mechanics w/o calculus and other higher math, and you can't do higher math w/o algebra, and so on. The problem is that uploading, and validating these dependencies can take many years. In theory conventional education is like the Linux Standard Base, a set of common packages which minimize the amount of dependencies that have to be loaded. Thus, in theory, a high school graduate should be able to handle most forms of non specialized knowledge. College majors and prerequisites are similar in this regard.

    Autodidacts are like folks who load every program they use without a package manager. A difficult task which not everybody can do. Also such systems are prone to crashes (massive holes in experience/training)

    The problem w/ much of mainstream education is that the 'IT department' is doing things by rote and doesn't really understand packages.

    What would be interesting is an educational overlay on wikipedia or the equivalent which would explicitly identify and specify these dependencies.

  16. Possibly hacking the phone system as bad as blue b on Apple Says iPhone Jailbreaking Could Hurt Cell Towers · · Score: 1

    Jail breaking iPhones is really evil, it threatens the phone system, like blue boxes.

    And we know the folks who made Blue Boxes were terrorists, pure evil incarnate. They should have been sent to prison for life!

  17. Re:WINE on Sandia Studies Botnets In 1M OS Digital Petri Dish · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hope Microsoft issues a statement that only Genuine Windows software can fully support viruses and malware in an effective fashion.

  18. Re:Minimum mass of a Petabyte on How Heavy Is a Petabyte? · · Score: 5, Informative

    That was my dissertation topic, conventional systems require ~kT per bit (k is the Boltzmann constant = 1.3806503 Ã-- 10-23 m2 kg s-2 K-1 and T is the temperature of the gate in Kelvin) for each read. Quantum systems can access well below that by various trickery (single photon optical computers can reduce this by a thousandfold). In theory a individual photon can hold huge amounts of data in it's state vector before collapse. The trick is making a measurement on enough of these photons to extract the info you need while overcoming shot noise.

  19. Yeah... Great Ideas on Sci-Fi Writers Dream Up Ideas For US Government · · Score: 1

    Umm, Great Ideas From Sigma so far:

    Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants.

    "free and worth every cent"

    Give me Charles Stross, John Scalzi, Rudy Rucker even David Brin and we'll talk.

  20. Re:contrary on Palm Kills Community Before It Begins · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Never ascribe to malice what can be accounted to stupidity.

    Every time I hear the "Only Responsibility is Maximizing Value for the Shareholders" argument it seems to be coming from executives who are gutting a company to realize great quarterly profits. They then jump clear on golden parachutes as the husk of a company nosedives.

    Wise corporations think well ahead, plowing money into research and development, retaining skilled and loyal workers, and cultivating a loyal and fanatical consumer base.

    Palm (and Handspring later) used to be the former, producing truly innovative, best in the world products. Now it's the latter, clueless and circling the drain.

    Entire segments of American industry have been wiped off the map this way in a manner far more pernicious than any communist could conceive.

  21. Re:Polish researches on No Museum Status For UK Home of Enigma Machine · · Score: 1

    The Poles worked out the basic algorithm, Bletchley Park provided the technology to practically implement the algorithm in a timely manner as well as deal with changes in the Enigma code as the war progressed (as well as spot errors in the German encryption protocol, and exploit captured codebooks and machines such as when the U505 was captured).

  22. Better than Vista WOW!!! on Dell Indicates Windows 7 Pricing Will Be Higher · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...though in just about every other aspect the operating system is beating Vista...

    Definitely the marketing slogan they should come out with "Better than Vista, almost better than the Swine Flu!"

  23. Yes you should Immediately Upgrade on Should Network Cables Be Replaced? · · Score: 1

    To Dennon proprietary ultra premium Denon Link cable. Made from high purity copper wire and high performance connection parts, the AK-DL1 will bring out all the nuances...The AK-DL1 employs high level tin-bearing alloy shielding not typically available in commercial cabling, to eliminate data loss caused by noise. Additionally, signal directional markings are provided for optimum signal transfer. Attention to detail when building this cable was used by employing high quality insulation and woven jacketing to reduce vibration and to add durability.

    In fact most computer problems come from running data the wrong way along cables. At $499 for each 1.5m length this cable is a steal. I insist on dennon link cables for a truly nuanced web experience!

  24. Plenoptic imaging on What to Fight Over After Megapixels? · · Score: 1

    Plenoptic imaging or Wavefront coding methods can be used to achieve greater depth and lens speed by exploiting redundancy in the pixel count.

  25. Re:Nokia n810 on Best Wi-Fi Portable Browsing Device? · · Score: 4, Informative

    Amen to that. I've got the 770, n800 and an n810. The n810 wins out for this app due to the keyboard, and the size which is small enough to put in your breast pocket or in a belt holster. WiFi is good and the display is fantastic. Onboard GPS sucks but otherwise an excellent device.

    Boot time is a bit long, but power management is sufficient to leave on for a long time.